Angela Is A Believer
by RedBrunja
Summary: It never occurred to her that Jack might not make it back.”Angela's thoughs after 'Aliens In A Spaceship.'


**Title: **Angela Is A Believer

**Author:** redbrunja

**Fandom:** Bones

**Author's Note:** It may just be that watching TJ Thyne knock it out of the park set my standards high but while I loved last week's episode, I could not reconcile Angela's actions and tone of voice with a woman in love, and since the idea of Angela not loving Jack at all could not be borne, I wrote fic.

**Spoilers: **2x07 Aliens In a Spaceship

**Rating:** PG-13

**Characters: **Angela & Jack

**Summery:**"It never occurred to her that Jack might not make it back."

"_I've always been a dreamer_

_I've had my head among the clouds_

_Now that I'm coming down_

_Won't you be my solid ground?"_

**"Sway"**

**–The Perishers**

Angela is a believer.

Maybe her life has just been too blessed, maybe she (despite the skeletons and mummies and corpses and too many faces who were never laughing again, never kissing again, never coming home again) just didn't understand tragedy.

It never occurred to her that Jack might not make it back.

Intellectually she knew that there was a possibility, knew that he could suffocate, knew they could be too late but she wasn't a scientist, she was an artist, and understanding lived in her emotions, not in her facalties.

So she saw his blood on the cement, and it was so unreal, the pool so small, nothing like the rooms filled with blood splatters that she'd constructed with pixels of light to help catch killers. Not real. Not Jack's.

Of course he was going to make it back.

So she did her thing, her bohemian-rocker-chick stickt, her normal-girl quips, and reality warped like Dali's clocks.

It didn't hit her until the hospital.

She held his hand through the ambulance ride, and he was real, and solid and _there_ and it didn't matter what the EMTs where calling in worried tones, it didn't matter that her lips tasted like dust and fear, he was _fine._

It wasn't until they wheeled him away, until she couldn't feel his (too) hot skin that it hit her.

He could have died.

She could have lost him.

Angela swallowed convulsively, standing in the bustling entryway, feeling like she'd gobbled down every single stick of graphite she owned.

Zach was standing by the wall, looking almost as out of place as she felt.

"Angela... are you okay?"

She nodded, staring at the dirt on his clothes. "I'm fine, Zack," she answered, gave him a quick smile and left.

She found the nearest bathroom and threw up everything in her stomach.

It wasn't much; breakfast had been a long time ago, and the bagel she'd bolted while trying to trace down Temperance's brother (how could she possibly have been hungry while Jack was slowly asphyxiating, while he was cut open, while he was dying? Was she really that cold?)

Angela retched again, stomach contorting painfully.

When she was done, she stumbled to the sink and washed out her mouth with hand soap. It tasted damp and antiseptic, and she didn't care. She splashed her face, fiddled with her hair, and stared at her jaundiced face in the mirror. She wished she'd brought her purse. Cosmetics would have helped; she wasn't sure how, but they would have.

Instead she stared at her reflection in the mirror until her hands stopped shaking, and when she walked out, Jack was gone.

It took the whole taxi ride to the Smithsonian to get calm enough to speak coherently. She had to work hard at it too, shoving the terror_ (oh god, she hadn't been afraid before, not really_,_ the Gravedigger couldn't have taken him again, could he?_) down until the only thing she could really feel was detached annoyance.

She told the taxi driver to wait, and threw forty bucks at him for a three-zone ride to make sure he would.

(≠)

When Jack was asleep in her apartment (sprawled across her bed, leg splayed out and face buried in her pillows and one hand holding hers) she counted his breaths and told herself not to cry.

With her right hand she fiddled with the pastels and paper she kept by her bed, telling herself that she could use the time to catch up on her sketchbook, or work on some of the landscapes she hadn't finished, knowing she was lying to herself even as the words scrolled across her mind. First, she couldn't bring herself to look away from Jack, terrified that he would wake up and she wouldn't be the first thing he saw (_she'd promised him, promised, and she could do this, at the very least_).

Secondly, her hands were trembling so badly they were utterly worthless.

Angela's breath hitched, and she let the pastels spill from her fingers, pressing her hand into her mouth. Her breathing steadied again but as she smoothed the curls back from Jack's forehead she felt tears drip down her face, hot and unseemly.

Angela watched Jack and waited for morning to come.


End file.
